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Rising 80-100’ into the canopy directly over my driveway, this year a large tree called the Mayan Breadnut or Maya Nut Tree, Brosimum alicastrum bore a LOT of fruit which plopped onto my truck and littered the ground until it got my attention
The wildlife appear to
relish the nuts, even when they’re green, peeling off and dropping the heavy
rinds all over the place. Occasionally a nut slips from their grasp and lands on my roof, crashing like a firecracker -- think of a marble, crashing on the bottom of a tin bucket from 80-100' up. Yup, that's about right. There is a Maya Nut Tree over my little Micasa, out in the jungle, too.
Here in the rainforest
you never know what’s blooming or fruiting overhead until the trees drop their
flowers or fruits, or some gluttonous forager loses a grip on its snack as it goes to pop it into its mouth. Possums,coatis, kinkajous, and other creatures chow down at night, and howler and
spider monkeys, toucans, parrots, and other birds and mammals forage in the
daytime, so you can often pick up “clues” about overhead tree identities on the ground after their feasts.
In early February I sketched a bunch of
interesting seeds/fruits/nuts that had fallen from the canopy onto my walkway.
The green fruit and shiny brown seeds on the right are the fruits from that tree, but at the time I didn't know what kind of fruits they were.
Now in early April, the fruits have
ripened, and the green peels have matured to a bright orange. They taste a lot like oranges, too. To make
sure they were edible, I first asked Belizean friends what they were called, then found them in my (excellent) book Trees of Belize
by Kate Harris, then went online to find out if they’d poison me if I nibbled on them. They
won’t.
And that was how I met and fell in love with...my Ramón Tree. { HA! Gotcha! Right?} I also discovered something else so interesting I thought you might
enjoy it, too.
It seems that the leaves of the Ramón
Tree, named after the Spanish word ramónear
which means “to browse,” were a favorite choice for chicleros seeking food
for their mules. In case you don’t know,
the chicleros were the hombres who went out into the forest in the early- to mid-1900s
to harvest the latex from the chicle tree (Manilkara sp.) for use in making chewing gum. There are still some working chicleros. I actually know a chiclero (but his name is Erec, not Ramón).
Chicle has been
used as a chewing gum for a l-o-o-o-ng time-- as Wikipedia notes: “… Maya traditionally chewed chicle… as a way to stave off hunger, freshen
breath, and keep teeth clean.” You've heard of Chiclets, right? They're nearly pure chicle latex, sugar added.
Okay, so the
chicleros’ mules ate the Ramón leaves. Then, their appetites sated, they hauled the
bags of chicle out of the jungle to be sold in the markets. I have a couple of chicle
trees about a hundred feet up the hill from my Ramón
Tree, crisscrossed with ancient chiclero slashes from which the latex dripped into the gathering bags.
What
really snagged my attention, though, was reading that as the chicleros chopped branches
from Ramón trees for the mules, they’d often discover that the trees were growing up
from the tumbled stonework of Mayan ruins.
The
archaeological record from Mayan sites shows that Ramón nuts were apparently a
dietary staple to the ancient Mayans, who ate the fruit and also boiled or
baked the dried and ground nuts, which have more protein than corn, as a major
part of their diet. Ramón nuts are still eaten in Quintana Roo (in Mexico) as
survival food.
So, in
a Ramón nutshell, it appears that the Ramón groves discovered by the chicleros may
be descendants of old Mayan Ramón orchards. What makes it even more
interesting, is that my Ramón Tree is within twenty feet of the edge of what is
said to be an unexcavated Mayan site in Mayan Circle here in the ecovillage where I live. So maybe my Ramón tree’s
long-ago ancestor was planted by a long-ago Mayan.
Anyway,
here’s what the ripe Ramón fruits look like. If you come to visit me in in April and
see a small orange fruit lying in the road (check the end of my driveway, just behind my pickup truck) stop and take a look. It will probably be a Ramón fruit. As you can see, it looks like a tiny orange with a stem. The seeds have a brassy appearance that's very distinctive.
If it's a Ramón fruit, give
it a wash then nibble on the orange rind. It’s really tasty – citrusy and
sweet. Yum! I didn’t try eating a green one earlier this year, because 1) I didn't know what it was then and I never taste unknown fruits, and 2) I'm guessing that the green rinds (like the ones in my sketch) would be
horribly tart and inedible, and maybe taste like turpentine.
I hope you'll forgive me (and Ramón) for trying to fool ya. It was irresistible.
